Sorry for the short notice.

But this is something you should look into ASAP…

http://budurl.com/ExpertsAcademyWBNR

The webinar is about how you can immediately
position yourself as a highly-paid expert to have more
income, influence and impact.

It’s being taught by Brendon Burchard, who made
became a huge success himself and guided many other experts using
these strategies.

If you’ve ever been curious about how the “experts”
START OUT…

Or if you’ve wondered how you could get your message
out to the world in a bigger way then you’ll love this complimentary webinar:

http://budurl.com/ExpertsAcademyWBNR

IMPORTANT: Even if you can’t make tonight’s webinar,
be sure to enter your email so Brendon can send you
the replay!

Enjoy the training,

Jack

PS. Oh, the webinar is called “How Experts Make
Money, Beat the Economy, and Dominate Their Topic.”

http://budurl.com/ExpertsAcademyWBNR

Yours,

Jack

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I found that using iTunes Podcasts is a very convenient way to learn.

You get tons of video lessons, news, how to stuff and more, brought Automatically

to your destop as well as to your iTouch/iPhone.

Here is a list of recent Computing Magazines based channels I picked.

This should save you some time as you listen or watch instead of read

Each one of those will launch your iTunes app.

In some countries (outside USA) the iTunes store will not allow you to

sign up to the podcasts.

However I was told there are solutions in case you do not sign up to a pay for podcast

(and all those podcasts are free):

• itpc://macworldheadlines.libsyn.com/rss – Mac World Headlines
• itpc://rss.macworld.com/macworld/weblogs/mwpodcast – Mac World Podcast
• itpc://www.mevio.com/feeds/pcmagreviews.xml – PC Magazine Reviews
• itpc://feeds.feedburner.com/pcpropodcast PC Pro Magazine Podcast
• itpc://feeds.pcworld.com/pcworld/itunes/audio – PC World Magazine Audio Podcast
• itpc://feeds.pcworld.com/pcworld/itunes PC World Magazine Video Podcast
• itpc://podcasts.scmagazine.com/rss2 – SC Magazine (Security) Podcast
• itpc://leoville.tv/podcasts/ww.xml – Paul Thurrott Windows Weekly Podcast
• Our Podcast (IT MasterMind Podcast with Audio of all our blog posts)

I’d be glad to get your recommendations regarding additional channels for our group.

P.S.

Talking about video, I have been playing with a nice tool that practically removes

the annoying “Buffering” pauses you get, while watching stuff on the major Video

sites, including Youtube of course. It can also speed up the iTunes videos you watch.

Remember “DAP” – Download Acceelerator?

Well the same guys now deliver a Video Accelarator program.

I enjoy it a lot – here is a link to their info

and download page: http://budurl.com/VideoAccelerator

Yours,

Jack.

Blog Post – IT Professional Career

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You probably recall many brain storm sessions, where only few people

would dominate, and after a while you got used to a “fact” that some

people are better at brining ideas to the table.

Let me tell you that I found out you could get much more of those sessions.

Here is a system I have learned about which could quadruple the amount

of ideas and participation in your meetings:

1. Start the meeting by explaining the issue at hand and the desired results.

2. Ask everyone to take a piece of paper and write down their ideas.

3. Put some quiet instrumental music in the background so that no one has

to deal with the silence. Researches consistently show that people are much

more creative, when there instrumental music is being played in the background.

There are also reports showing much better results while writing ideas on paper,

rather than writing them on the computer keyboard.

See more info about it in the Audio Book I mention here.

4. Give it at least 10 minutes.

5. Collect all the papers.

6. Start reading the papers one by one and write the ideas on a writing board, so that

any one can see it.

7. Have every one select their pick for the best 3 top solutions out of the whole list and

review the top ideas, to go in details as possible solutions.

This system will get the less dominant people in your team contributing a ton,

before the group hears from the more dominant members and get influenced by them.

Get this Audio Book for about $7 (if you haven’t used this service yet)    

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

and use a ton of additional advises on how to make the most

of your team’s brain power.

I read it and it has amazing ideas for any IT Professional career

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(Your Year 2009 Goals and the 100 days challenge)

Hey there!

Sorry for the short notice.

But since this starts on 23 Sep (2 days from now),
and I don’t want you to miss this,

I decided to send this now anyway.

It is about your 2009 goals and finishing the year in away
you cannot even imagine right now.

It is about creating the same level of breakthrough Jeff Bezos
from Amazon,or Google’s creators had gone through.

It is true you may not get to create a new “Amazon” soon, but
you certainly can get your career and workplace leap frog.

But first let me tell you a story…from my high school days

There was one computers teacher, Mr. Angel whom I admired.
He knew a lot, always had answers. He was very demanding
on one side and yet he would sit with students who had difficulties
and help them until they got the point.
He had bright blue eyes which could look at you with either
pride or disappointment if you did not do your best.

Did you have such a teacher?

Anyway, after teaching us all the sequential methods
to sort a group of numbers using a computer program,
he challenged us.

He asked us to try and find a way to sort the numbers in a new way
that would slash the sort time to say 10% of the best one we had.

All of us were stunned…make it 10 times faster…and then we
had it brewing in our minds for the whole week.
And then myself and few others found a solution. It was not perfect,
but it worked. It required a shift in perception. It was not suited
to solve any situation, but it did refer to what we were asked.

And it did work in 1/10 of the time and even less than the best
method we learned.

But we could not have reached it, if Mr. Angel did not challenge us.

Here is one of the basic success tips in the 100 day challenge:

We are accustomed to believe that results are possible due to
incremental growth. It is even more prominent within people
like you and me – IT professionals, accustomed to
step-by-step procedures.

Thing is major breakthroughs require a massive shift in perception
and then in action. It is about setting a much higher goals
and yet aligning them with a noble cause.

And there are more new perceptions as well.
You can learn more about it in the special free
report and additional videos here: IT Professional career

http://budurl.com/100DaysChallenge

I have reviewed the materials there and I am sure you will be
like it and use the ideas and the 100 day action plan to bring
your career and company to a new level of success.

Here is the link:

http://budurl.com/100DaysChallenge

P.S.

My “friends” mailing list got an early note about this.
Be sure to sign-up to the friends list on my blog so you don’t
miss such goodies next time here: IT Professional Blog

P.P.S.

We have uploaded new free reports to the blog -
be sure to review and download…

Until next week, pick up your new work plan for the remaining 100
days of 2009 – http://budurl.com/100DaysChallenge

Yours,

Jack.

IT Professional career

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you can absorb, process, and then spit out a great wisdom in the right moment.

That is why you probably read several magazines, skim through several newsletters,

README docs, listen to web casts, watch the latest Video Course and so on and on.

Do you also feel sometimes like your head is going to explode?

Let me tell you, I am one of those unbelievable guys who listen to Audio

tech stuff on the iPod, as they make salad, wait on traffic jams.

I even convert selected texts (long mails, books, docs) to Audio

just to I can learn faster, and extract Audio from Video so I can

listen without getting hooked to the tube.

If you are an  information technology specialist, you have to master lots of realms.

Even if you “Just” run Linux, you need to learn LDAP, MySQL, Security stuff and so on.

How do you learn so much and still have time to live and focus on the main tasks

at work?

Here are 2 tools I have been using in the past years and can recommend:

1. The Accelerated Learning Techniques By Brian Tracy and Colin Rose

As I used this recording (CDs or MP3 immediate download) I started learning

twice or 3 times faster any new stuff that comes along. I can focus

on the most important items I should learn very quickly, and I can remember

much more – this has actually finally solved my “Can’t remember names” problem.

Let me tell you one of the secrets on remembering names, so you have

an immediate take out: As someone tells you their name, repeat the name

in your mind for at least 6-7 times. As you do that, look at their face

and try to attach to their name, something unique about them

(they always smile, have blue eyes, short haircut, (no hairs in my case )

You will be amazed how quickly you get many more friends as you

finally remember their names!

2. The excellent Text To Audio Program – TextAloud –

(This is the download link). It saves tons of  time

converting too-long-mails to Audio as well as eBooks, memos, web pages.

That way I can listen to it while doing something else, instead of

getting my eyes stuck to the screen, trying furiously to skim mountains of text.

That’s all for today…let me know your best time savers for boosting our

Information Technology Career.

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IT Professionals and accountants

I heard sometime that accountants are rated at the top of the stressful jobs list.

I think that is dead wrong… It is the IT Professional, who’s under huge stress.

Both professions require accuracy, keeping a hawk’s eye on details and

ever making sure no one is hurt by what they are doing. When they do a mistake,

it could have huge impact on many people…

IT PRO and The Story of 2 failed disks.

Once upon a time there were two small little disks.

They rotated happily and spitting out data and from time to time swallowed some bits as well.

They were not alone.

Together with them there were few other disks running and throwing bits and  bytes at each other.

They were all in the same secret group – the RAID5 group.

One day bad electricity surge boy came along and hit one of them…really hard and so the disk failed.

The other disk was shocked so much, that he could not spin no more.

And so the whole RAID group dropped dead that very moment.

FIX FIX FIX – Completely FIX!

Since the 2 failing disks could not be fixed, a service technician was called upon.

He rushed away bringing new disks to replace with the failed ones.

Actually,  the technician was so happy to help that he brought a whole new set of disks rather than just two.

He was worried about the way the two disks failed and wanted to make sure COMPLETELLY

that there would be no chance for a failure on the other disks in the group.

As he was getting ready to walk away with the bad disks, I said “STOP!”

The tech guy said “Why? What happened? Aren’t you happy?”

I said – “Put your hands up in the air and give me all the bad disks!”

The reason why I wanted the bad disks.

Why on earth would I want to keep the bad disks?

I should be restoring my data from tapes to the new set of disks – right?

Why should I care about the bad disks, their data is gone anyway – right?

Well…maybe not…

What happens if I find out the data on our backups excludes very important items…

critical items…which I can’t find anywhere…except on the bad disks…

How on earth can you recover data from a failed disk, which is part of a RAID group?

As an IT Pro, you probably know that each file stored on a RAID5 disk set,

will be spread across the group’s disks.

And so COMPLETE recovery would be almost impossible, specially if 2 of the disks in

the group have failed , resulting in the miss of the chunks  of the files they had stored – right?

Well, actually if you know a bit about Computer Forensics you are already guessing that

even thought one cannot COMPLETELLY recover the data in this failed group, he can

still recover some files…maybe the critical files that are missing.

IT Professional and The Amazing Powers of incompleteness

We IT professionals always want to Completely fix things.

We don’t like loose ends.

We want clean data, situation resolved, close all holes, failing disks trashed, COMPLETELY.

That’s great. However, I found out that many times when I accept incompleteness

it opens up better or new possiblities.

So before you run around fixing everything, solving all the issues, consider that maybe

not all issues have to be COMPLETELLY resolved. Sometimes a workaround is just fine.

Sometimes it is good to keep the failed stuff around…it may be better than the

new shiny stuff you put in place

P.S.

Do let me know your thoughts…

P.P.S.

If you enjoyed this post, please take the time and

download one of more of our white papers and reports in the vault.

You’d enjoy them and the contributors of those reports will be happy…and so will we.

Yours,

Jack.

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If you want to turn your knowledge into additional income, creating eBooks,
special reports, how to videos and other “Information Products” -
then you’re going to want to download and read this new free report
that’s just been published.

It’s called the “Marketing Voodoo” report, and it teaches you two of the most
valuable and important lessons for increasing the value and price of the information you have.
It was written by a guy who runs a $25 Million per year Information Product business.

Inside, you’ll learn how to NAME your concepts and products to increase their value,
and how to “translate” the value of what you’re teaching into terms that make
your information worth a LOT more in the mind of your prospects.

You can download it right now by going to this page and opting-in to read it:

http://budurl.com/ITGuru

I’d really love to  know what’s your thoughts about this report – so please do comment here!

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We don’t have a spare minute during our workday and even not afterwards when we’re at home, spending time with our dear ones, taking care of our health, maybe enjoying hobbies on the weekends.

Even so, at all times we want to know more, get ahead of the crowd, learn and prepare ourselves for our next non-trivial assignment…

Our forum here as well as few other leading ones are a place of inspiration.
and assistance as well as contribution.

And then, we don’t have the time to review, read what’s important,
get to the end of a discussion and summarize the bottom line.

I have been thinking about this a lot.

I think I have a solution.

I am considering to launch a companion that will escort you on this journey.

The current idea is based on a weekly AUDIO summary of the best
discussions for IT Pros.

No more than 65 minutes a week (so you can burn it to CD if you like, or put on your MP3 player).

I’d like to have your advise on this one…

Click here to assist

Now, since Linkedin Polls are a $1 for each response, I am putting here
a link to a free survey service and I’d like to ask you to answer two
simple questions there.

Here is the link:

Click here to assist

Yours,

Jack.

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“…A career in information technology usually has its share of
ups and downs. Download this Internet.com eBook to learn
where the jobs are in IT, how to negotiate a salary, and
helpful advice on job security and how to deal with a layoff…”

I have read this short report and tend to agree with many items posted
there about the future of IT in the following years.

I think you should read it.

This includes:

• IT Outlook: Less Confidence, But Plenty of Opportunities
• Seven Hot Tech Skills That Employers Need
• Data Center Skill Sets, Keeping It Fresh
• Five Tips for Staying Employed in IT Through 2010
• IT Headhunters
• The Guide to IT Headhunters

You’ll have to Join http://www.Internet.com to download the report here:

Navigating Your IT Career

Yours,

Jack.

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I was thinking how we can shine above all this, and help our companies as well

as ourselves to succeed and go through all the challenges…

So I want to share with you several resources I have found.

I’ll mention here the first one.

But I want to share with you first a short story that relates to it.

My boy has just started to become interested in girls…

And he asked me to bring him books about girls in his age.

He wanted to know what interests them, what troubles them and so on.

So I asked, why he’s interested in what girls go through instead about what

happens to boys.

He said “Dad, you told me that the best way to succeed in business is learn

every thing you can about the other person you want to partner with”.

So here is a resource that will help you to get to know your partner

in your workplace…that is your employees and your employee.

Its about knowing what the other person is concerned of and what

methods he uses to measure and grade…”

Go to http://www.smarttopgrading.com/TGO/index.cfm

and sign-up for their fr-ee newsletter as well as the fr-ee eBookand learn how to get

and empower the best employee, as well as how to become a better employee.

• Avoid Costly Mis-Hires A 50-page ebook overview of Topgrading best practices.
• Learn how leading companies achieve 90% good hires
• Know your company’s costs of mis-hires
• Tips to source high performers without running ads or using recruiters
• How to save 15 hours pre-screening candidates
• Learn the most revealing interview questions
• How to get former bosses to talk to you in reference calls
• Cost of Mis-Hire Form, so your team can easily see the high costs of not using Topgrading methods.

Here is the book if you want to buy it. I do recommend.

The free eBook summarizes the book…

Please do comment here in the blog what worries you

and if you want to run our first Master Mind call and

empower each other.

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